February 7, 2025 • 47 mins
Molly talks to Spencer Sunshine about his book, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege. Sunshine's book explores the history of Siege, the book that is today's nazi terrorist's bible.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Coll Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hey, everybody, Molly here. I know it's not Thursday. This
isn't a new episode of Weird Little Guys, but I
think it is something you might enjoy. There's a book
that comes up a lot on this show, a book
called Siege by James Mason. It's a foundational text for
the modern neo Nazi terrorist. It was required reading for
(00:30):
members of the Neo Nazi terrorist organization Adam Woffin, and
it was written by a guy whose life was absolutely
weird enough for his own series of episodes. One of
these days, this is an interview with the author of
a book about that book, and I had a great
time talking with Spencer Sunshine about his book Neo Nazi
(00:50):
Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, The Origins and Afterlife of James
Mason's Siege. I don't actually recommend reading Siege, but if
you're interested in that text, you should definitely check out
Spencer's book about it. The interview went up earlier this
week as an episode of it could happen here another
show on the Cool Zone Media network. But I know
(01:11):
now everybody subscribes to all the shows on the network,
even if you should, and I thought you all might
enjoy this too. It provides a little more context for
that weird Nazi book I keep bringing up. So if
you haven't already heard this episode on another feed, I
hope you'll give it a listener.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I am once again your occasional host, Molly Conker, and
I am joined today by Spencer Sunshine, the author of
Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, The Origins and Afterlife
of James Mason's Siege. It's available now in paperback. I
have my paperback copy from Ritledge Press. So Spencer, I
guess let's get right into it.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
What is Siege and why should we still be talking
about it?
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Well, unfortunately, we should still be talking about it because
it's still influential. It was a book originally published in
nineteen ninety three, but that is an edited version of
newsletters published in the eighties by a fellow named James Mason,
who is a lifelong neo Nazi. He joined the American
Nazi Party at age fourteen in nineteen sixty six. He
is still an active ideological believer in national socialism. It's
(02:22):
a book that in it he makes the argument that
any kind of normal legal political activity was pointless for
neo Nazis to engage in and like forming organizations, holding marches,
making the traditional propaganda, trying to build up parties, even
guerrilla warfare. At the end of it, he becomes very
cynical about and he says, through what are essentially dramatic
(02:46):
random acts of violence, of terrorism or murder. He even
goes into praising serial killers like Joseph Paul Franklin, we
can destabilize the government and society and after this neo
Nazis can come to pay. This has become a very
influential idea. More recently he was rediscovered. It was a
pretty obscure The newsletters were very unpopular that he never
(03:08):
made more than one hundred copies. The original book had
a print run of one thousand, so it was a
sort of obscure text. It was known amongst neo Nazi
circles for some unusual reasons. It became mixed up with
some countercultural figures and that was actually what made it
more well known. But it was revived in twenty fifteen.
It was found by these younger aspiring terrorists, let's say
(03:32):
at the time around a message board called Iron March.
It became the bible of the Adam Offin Division, this
neo Nazi group that its members and associates killed five people,
and out of that everyone in the Adam off And
Division had to read Siege, which became the hashtag. And
out of that grew this whole sort of network, first
(03:53):
of groups and now really totally decentralized like propaganda channels
on Telegram, dub Terogram promoting these same ideas, and so
it's become very influential today. It gets named in like
terrorist manifestos. The school shooter, I think it was in Nashville,
Tennessee that just happened. He makes a reference to people
(04:14):
who are into siege in his writings, and more and
more I've documented before him at least twelve murders that
are either by the Adam Waffin Division, by people inspired
by Siege culture, or by people directly linked to Terogram.
So if we want to look at the main text
animating neo Nazi terrorism today, which has now spread around
the globe, of this groups in Latin America, there's groups
(04:35):
in eastern Western Europe. It's even influencing groups in the
Middle East. Or people in the Middle East. They're called accelerationists.
They want to accelerate the collapse of things. And if
there's a single ideological text today that's influential on the scene,
it is by easily James Mason Siege.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And what I particularly am enjoying about the book, I
just told you before we started recording.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I haven't finished it yet.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
What I'm enjoying about this book is so you know,
you were saying that Sames Mason started writing this in
the eighties, right, but nobody was reading it. It was
very sort of niche. It wasn't popular, even within its
own niche. He was not a popular man. He had
a lot of beefs with other leaders in the movement.
It's rediscovered in the twenty tens. It's big on Iron March.
It's the animating force behind Adam Waffin. And so all
(05:17):
of a sudden in the last ten years, people like us,
you know, researchers of the far right, mainstream journalists, people
are talking about Siege, they're talking about Mason. But this,
I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is the only
book sort of tracing it back to its root. James
Mason did not come into existence in twenty fifteen on
the pages of Iron March. Right, they sort of dug
(05:39):
back up this writing that was at that point thirty
years old. But this book, I mean, it's an incredible
work of research, but it's also sort of a picuresque, right.
It follows James Mason through decades of Nazi history.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
He wasn't just a guy who wrote a newsletter. He
was a guy who was in a lot of rooms.
He knew a lot of people. So through the leg
of James Mason's life, you can follow the origins of
the modern neo Nazi movement back to the sort of
splinters and sects and rival personalities of the seventies. Right
that you can't understand modern neo Nazi organizing if you
(06:16):
don't know the history that goes back to the sixties
and seventies.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Well thank you forgetting that. I had someone write a
review and it was an interesting view from the viewpoint
of literary criticism, and he's like, well, this is one
of these books about a book it's not And I'm like, yeah,
it kind of is, but it's really And I started
after I started writing this which has an unusual origin
or just maybe it is a usual origin. Like the
first half is about Neo Nazism in the nineteen seventies,
(06:40):
which is incredibly undocumented. There's a huge problem with a
documentation about the far right in general before twenty fifteen.
Probably more books have come out in the last ten
years about the far right in the US before twenty
fifteen than came out before, and certainly about neo Nazis,
who are almost always when they are written about American
(07:00):
neo Nazis, it's usually in a history of the white
supremacist movement, and there's no differentiation made between them, and
I would say the National Socialists are quite different from
other white supremacists for a variety of different reasons. So
there is no book about Neo Nazism in the nineteen
seventies in the US at all. There are only two
documents I can really name, and they're both written by
(07:21):
National Socialists actually, one in Australia and one the head
of the New Order which used to be the American
Nazi Party. It's actually not bad. It's an eight part
series by Martin Kirk. So the first half is really
reconstructing what happened in the nineteen seventies because this is
what Siege is coming out of. This Siege is an
answer to the questions that faced neo Nazis in the
nineteen seventies. And then the second half of the book
(07:44):
is even I would say less about Mason. It's about
these four countercultural figures who discover Mason, help publish him,
and eventually published and disseminated Siege itself. And part of
that is I was just around the scene these people
were part of in the nineteen nineties. Like I saw
one of them, boyd Rice play. I had many mutual
friends with another, the publisher Adam Parfrey of Farrell House.
(08:05):
So like, I was like right around what these people
were doing as part of the nineties counterculture. So I
became very interested in that because these people always denied
their background, you know, or s left it off or something.
And I found just so many smoking guns in this
And so I will say how this started is right
after Charlottesville. They unite the Right rally at Charlottesville. Always
(08:27):
you say these things and just you give the name
of the thing, and people are like, wait a minute,
that's like where I live. You know, we're more than that,
you know. I was in Seattle. I was like, oh,
I was at Seattle, referring to this nineteen ninety nine demonstration,
and I'm like, people are here, weren't even necessarily born then,
and just saying at Seattle doesn't mean anything. So after
Unite the Right, there was a spike in popularity in
(08:49):
Siege and the hashtag read siege because it looked like
the rally followed what he said, and he said, no
one in American society will allow neo Nazis to succeed.
And a lot of people don't know this, but what
happened at the initial rally is that it wasn't the
street fighting people might be familiar with, even that's fading
from memory. Was before it was supposed to start, And
(09:10):
when it was supposed to start at noon, the police,
who had been standing a block away and letting everything unfold,
marched in and forced everyone out, meaning the rally never happened.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Nobody ever gave a speech.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
Nobody gave a speech. As we know, the car attack
happened like an hour or two later. I got to
look at a timeline, it's all like garbled now right, Yeah,
that sounds right. And the book is co dedicated to
Heather hair I just want to point out. So it
seemed to coincide with what Mason said. He's like, you
can't do legal work, you have to do a terrorism right,
(09:41):
And so there was a spike and interest in it,
and Adam Offfen had been doing more and more. Adam
often people are committing murders, strange murders. They're all very
strange murders, which I think speaks to a lot of
the personalities who are involved in this and other forms
of violence. Even in more structured political movements. I think
it does a tends to attract fringe people, except at
(10:02):
certain times where people are intentionally using it as a
strategy as part of a bigger mass movement. Anyway, these
are questions for terrorism studies, and so there was a
spike of interest in it. So I was going to
write a short article for a think tank I used
to be associated with, which I will not name because
I had such a bad experience with them, and it
was going to be an article. I couldn't get the
facts to line up. As I said, there's terrible scholarship
(10:23):
about this period, and so I used this very sophisticated
research tool called Google, and through that I found that
Mason's papers. There was a huge collection of Mason's papers
at the University of Kansas and Lawrence, Kansas, so I
decided I'd go there. I thought I'd just straighten these
things out. There were some documents I needed, some very
obscure fanzines and stuff. That'd be the end of the day.
(10:46):
I got through. Well, first I discovered it's not easy
to get to Lawrence, Kansas. You have to fly into
an airport, and then I think I took an uber
for like an hour. There was like one bus a
day or something. Anyway, I got there and started poking
at the papers. It was sixty boxes of his core respondents.
He had letters incoming and outgoing since the early nineteen sixties.
As you mentioned, he was an insider to the neo
(11:06):
Nazi movement, so it was with all these people he
had kept carving copies of his outgoing letters. Was a
unique slice of national socialist life in the United States.
Never seen an archive like it. People didn't keep their
papers because they were doing illegal activities. The government sees
them and has them in a warehouse somewhere or whatever.
This is even in the pre Internet. I can only
do this because it was pre Internet, and there were
(11:27):
paper copies of stuff and of the age where I
grew up doing all research on paper and in archives.
And I quickly found out what I had. And there
were two things. One, as I said, was that there
was this whole story of American neo Nazism, of when
the American Nazi Party splinters then called the National Socialist
White People's Party in the nineteen seventies, and all these
(11:48):
groups come out of it, many of which we know
parts of, like William Peters who wrote the Turner Diaries
and the Skoky incident which is parodied in The Blues Brothers.
Some people don't know this, just so Paul Franklin shooting
and paralyzing the publisher Larry Flint, and some other things.
And I was like, Oh, these are all people who
came out of one thing, a splintering of the party.
And I realized that there basically was a terrorist wing
(12:09):
that came out of the splintering. And people knew Mason
and people knew Pierce, but there was like a couple
other groups or people, but people didn't put it together
that they were all like the most radical wing of
these splinter groups. So there was that story and then,
as I mentioned, there was a second story about these
kuntercultural people who had always denied that they were involved
in national socialism or the level of it. It was
(12:31):
just a joke, all these things that we hear today,
almost word for word. And so I found all their
letters to James Mason, and they're adorned with swastikas and
eight aids, and they're helping him. Had they reveal the
extent that they helped him? And the funny thing is
a lot of this stuff was actually available and out
in the open. It was published books, but it was
like little pieces of flakes of gold scattered around everything,
(12:53):
and I started picking them up because I realized you
could put them together. And so one article turned out
was supposed to be one article, and then it turns
two articles. And I sat down to write it and
turned into a book. And then five years later I
finally had the manuscript done. Then took another year at
the publishers, and then it came out last year. So
it's been seven years of work, and I've been going
(13:13):
around doing talks. I did seventeen talks and supported the
book and as many podcasts and stuff. So I'm still
The book is still part of my life, as much
as I would like to sort of put it down.
But thank you for remedy on the podcast. This is
not great they have me on the podcast. Not against
no diss against you, no shade, no shade no.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
And I'm so I'm so jealous of your trip to
Kansas to see the archives. I only recently a year
or two, discovered that his papers existed in those archives,
and so I wrote to the archivist and I said, like,
you know, are any of these digitized? I would love
to see them. And there's like, you know, we've only
digitized like one box. And they sent me a couple
of a couple of scans, but most of it has
not been digitized. So you have to go to Kansas
(13:53):
if you want to read this old pedophile Nazis letters
to Charles Manson.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Well, I do have thousands of pictures I took of
this correspondence. So yeah, if you request digital copies, they
won't tell you what they've digitized. And so it's it's
like you know, trying to like randomly throw darts or something.
If you get the right file, they have them.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
And I was like, I was begging and pleading, I
was like, please, just like any letters you have with
Bob Heyke, I just I just want the Bob Hike letters.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
But I can give you the Bob Hyke letters.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I would love those.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
I think they'll they'll digitize stuff for a price.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Though, I'm sure. I'm sure if I pay for it,
they would do me the favor.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
But that's the thing, is that there's so much interconnection
here because these stories always get told episodically, right, like
the story of James Mason and Adam Woffen, the story
of William Luther Peers, the story of the founding of
the National Socialist Movement. But nobody takes those pieces and
slots them together because they interlock. They all interlock, right,
(14:51):
And so this idea of the lone wolf, I mean,
I guess James Mason's life's work is to perpetuate and
motivate the lone wolf. But is it really a lone
wolf if he's training them.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Well, the lone wolf question is is a long question.
A lot of people know Metzger moved to the lone
wolf strategy after a war was sued by the SPLC
and collapse, but Mason was advocating this beforehand and was
very tight with Metzger. So there is actually a book
describing what you've said, putting the pieces together, and it's
called Neo Nazi Terrorism and Counterculturals exactly. It's the I
(15:24):
think which you can buy today.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I mean, like I said, it is the only book
that I know of that fits these pieces together.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
No, it is the only book. Actually, I've been in
contact with James Mason, and he said when radio interview,
it's not the first of its kind, but it's the
best of its kind.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
A high praise from the book's Nazi pedophile subject. Why
did he donate his papers to the library, because, like
you said, most people are not not only not per
deserving these items where they're not preserving them at all
(16:02):
because they know what they've done is illegal or embarrassing
to everyone involved, and they're intentionally destroying the evidence of
these kinds of communications. But he not only saved them,
but he wanted to make sure we could read them.
Did you talk to him at all about why he
did that?
Speaker 4 (16:16):
Well, he sold them. He was a wheeler dealer in
especially American Nazi Party memorabilia. You know, he sold furniture
on the side like antiques. He'd go antiquing, and he
if you've seen pictures of his apartment, it's filled with
Nazi nickknacks. Right, he's got a knife collection.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
I mean, it looks like it looks like the Area
Nation's booth at the Tulsa Gun Show.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
It looks like my apartment, but like the in the
inverse and fewer plants. So he was a collector, so
he was already on. My understanding is he was already
selling George Lincoln Rockwell memoryabilia or whatever, papers and such.
Two Kansas. They have this collection there called the Wilcox
Collection of anti Extremist stuff. This guy, Lair Wilcox, had
(17:00):
been in early students for Democratic Society before they took
the like Marxist turn, and then decided that the left
and the right were the same, like in the seventies
or something, and started collecting all this material. So they
were one of the they're probably the biggest collection of far
right material. And as I said, at the time, libraries
weren't collecting it and people weren't writing about it. They
were like, oh, these are just a bunch of kooks
(17:22):
and wing nuts. They're not important. And some of this
is because, like as I say in the book, the
first neo Nazi mass murder wasn't until the late seventies,
like it was what we know as neo Nazism today
really only emerged in the seventies, is when my arguments
in the book. So the papers were there because he
sold them. The second thing is he is unique, I
(17:43):
think not unique, but very uncommon because he is an
unabashed neo Nazi. He does not try to hide it.
He is not like the NSM, which is actually a
party he co founded shockingly but left over it as
they turned because originally it was to promote violence, and
then as it turned to a more traditional Hollywood Nazi party,
he left. But it's the same one that was at Charlottesville,
(18:04):
and Jeff's Scoop was the head of I actually taught
Jeff Scoop about how the party was founded. That was
very interesting. I interviewed him for the book.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Another one of those dishonest actors.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Well, the guy who had made him the head of
the party, who was actually the second head, Harrington, cliff Harrington.
Clifford Harrington did not give him the truthful account of
the parties founding. Harrington claimed he was a co founder
and he wasn't he claimed a different date. This is
one reason I spent so much time on stuff. Also
that I found all these things that had been printed
that were wrong. The bi scholars and others that were
(18:35):
and it wasn't their fault. They were taken. It was
hard to get these harder to get these documents, especially
when a group is moving. And so Harrington claimed he
had been a co founder in nineteen seventy four or whatever,
but he was lying. Mason was one of the co
founders and not him. He only became the head in
the eighties. So this is some of this stuff I found. Anyway,
(18:55):
I was going to say the NSM at one point
go where not Neo Nazis were National Socialists.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
I was like, get the fuck out of here, like really,
like come all, your flag is a swastikonic ah. I mean,
this is absurd, but people will do that, right, It's
like the Dead Parrots skit in Monty Python.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
If people know this and so. But Mason stands out
because he's always been very upfront about his views. He's
very proud of them. He's not ashamed, and if it's
embarrassed other people, they didn't belong. He's as he told
to me they didn't believe in the One True religion.
So I asked him about these counterculture figures who have
denied they were ever involved in this stuff. At the time,
he was convinced they were National socialists, and he was like, well,
(19:35):
they believed in something else other than the One True Faith.
I think that's the word he used. So yeah, he
is nothing to hide. He's very open about it, very
open about promoting terrorism, as you know, and maybe some
of the listeners do. Young neo Nazis go to his
apartment and he tutors them. They take pictures with him.
This included Sam Woodward, who murdered a young gay Jewish man,
(19:56):
Blaze Bernstein recently sent his to life in prison. There's
picture is a Woodword in Mason's apartment. So yeah, I
mean he wants is He's proud of his lineage and
he wants it documented. And I know I did him
a favor by writing a book about his movement. I mean,
they don't have the intellectuals and the resources to in
the train people to write historical books, and I did
(20:17):
it a pretty straight up book. Even Mason was like,
I kept waiting to read the smear I kept waiting
for the smear. There was no smear. I was like, yeah,
I just wrote it as a history book, and so
in a way I've given them an insight into their
history which wouldn't exist otherwise. So this stuff is always
a double edged sword when you cover as you know,
when you cover fascist groups, they want the publicity, by
(20:38):
and large. I was told sometimes at the SPLC, like
groups contact them and they're like, cover us, give us.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Coverage, sending them their press releases.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
But I mean, I think someone like Mason, I guess
he doesn't see this smear because, like you said, he's
proud of himself. So this is I think is an
honest appraisal of his legacy, and most people would see
that as a but he's proud of it.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Well, it's not a smear. I don't need to say
anything bad about him. He's there promoting Nazi terrorism. What's
the point of, like, you know, denouncing this or something.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
I mean, Whereas I think someone like Pierce, I think
sometimes when people write honestly about Pierre, obviously he's been
dead for twenty five years, but he resisted the characterization
that he was inciting terrorism, even though he like Mason
very much, was.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Oh well, Pierce is just a liar. I mean, all
these guys exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
That's what I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
But I think a book like this about Pierce, I
think he would not have enjoyed, whereas Mason is at
least honest about his legacy.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
You know, there is a terrible book about Pierce by
one of the sycophants who is a professor actually Griffin.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah, and that again, that is one of those dishonest histories.
I think we were talking before we started recording that
the problem with archival research trying to write a history
of these movements is they are dishonest actors.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
And so Robert S. Griffin, he wrote, what is it
the fame of a dead Man's Deeds? Is that what
it's called?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
He went into it, you know, saying like, I'm going
to write this neutral appraisal of this figure of the movement,
about William Luther Pierce. And over the weeks that he
spent on the compound to write it, and he spent
time with Peers on the compound in Hillsborough, became radicalized
and is a Nazi. Now are he still alive? I mean,
he could take issue with that characterization if he wants.
(22:22):
But I'm sure you've read the book.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
It's not neutral. It's a has giography of Peers.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Yeah. There's actually a book by Pierce's son too, which
is interesting.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
I've read that. It's quite good.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Well, unfortunately a lot of it's copy pasta.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
But.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
I think his insight into his relationship with his father
is very unique. It is called The Sins of My
Father by Kelvin Pearce. I mean, that's a window you
don't often get, although I guess now we do also
have the Klansman's Son by Don Black's daughter.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
Black's daughter or son.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
She has transitions.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Oh, I did not know that, well, Mazeltov. Yeah, yeah,
I remember reading their work before Trump, and they actually
wrote one of the most moving resignations from the movement
that I've read, very much taking you know, being accountable,
even though they were raised in it. And I feel like
children raised in this are not like as accountable as
adults are, right, especially like they were in college at
(23:17):
the time. But it was like a true interesting working
through it, and I felt like heartfelt apology for it.
And yeah, actually this is a fun fact. You may
know a member of the Aryan Nationalist Action A and A.
This terrorist is a bank robbing group from the eighties,
I think became the first person to transition gender.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
From Donald Lanyan.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Donna Langen was known as pretty Boy Pedro when she
was the head of the Argan Republican Armies, a bank
robbery gang out of Ellaheim City. Yeah, she was the
first person to win a battle with the federal government
to transition in federal.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Prison to get surgery.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
And just recently, actually, there was a filing in her case.
She's trying to get the way the case is titled
in the court records is still Peter Langan, her dead name,
and the judge denied her petition to retitle the case.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
But she has transitioned and is in a women's prison.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Is she in Texas?
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Oh gosh, I could look up in the BOP where
she is.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Texas bans prisoners from changing their names.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
She is in FMC cars.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Well, that isn't in Dallas, Texas. Yea, yeah, that's why.
That's why.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
So she's still in the BOP system under her dead name,
but she was allowed to physically transition. So that's again
just a strange twist of history, right, that the person
who won that legal model for us was a Nazi
bank robber.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Well, she has also long repudiated those politics. So I
think she's been the only person to have surgery transperson
has surgery who was in prisoned at the time, because
I think that was recently and then everything, you know,
everything they changed. They I know that they slowed down
their transpower waiting to see the results of the election.
(25:02):
So for a strange reason, I know, actually a bunch
of the stuff about trans people in prison and so anyway.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
No, it's I mean, it's a remarkable, remarkable history.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah, So you started writing this book after Unite the Right.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Because there was this renewed interest in siege.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I mean, because what has the experience been, like, you know,
over the course of spending the last six years of
your life working on this, realizing that it is only
becoming more relevant and not less.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Well, the problem is is like for people like us
who watch the far right, like our work is only
important or people are only interested in it when there
is a big upswing, and then like that's when people
are interested and that's when it is more important. So
on one hand, it's good that I didn't spend five
years and then no one remembered what siege was and
it was just a blip. I mean, that's good for me,
(25:49):
but I have to say what's good for me is
bad for society.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
And so, I mean, I think it would have been
an important work of history regardless. But I guess as
you're working on it, realizing that the body count is
only growing.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Yeah, it's I don't know, I don't really you know,
what do you say about that? I call these people
empty people spreading emptiness. Like it's hard for me even
to get mad at the more aggressive neo Nazis and
white supremacists. Like often they're young, and I just see
like sad young people who can't deal with their problems,
(26:22):
engaged in like hurting other people who are often not
so different than them, you know. I mean there's a
trans man who was in Adam. Often, you know, like
they're yeah, numerous stories of people being you know, of
not white descent, either they're hiding that they're not, or
they're a mixed race descent and they're sort of passing
(26:43):
as wide of being Jewish and being queer, all this stuff.
The movement's filled with these people. Sometimes it's the people
are even like how many straight white men are there
in the movement, Like and it's just sad. You're like,
I see you're being attracted to this because you're so
alienated or you were so your identity is so shaky
that you are attracted to this idea of a firm,
(27:05):
strong identity. And I mean sometimes people forget fascism in
Italy and Germany arose and basically the last two countries
that arose and solidified in Europe, Like those were countries
that wasn't clear what Italy was going to be. There's
such differences between the north and the south. There's no reason,
Like it was unclear originally whether Germany was going to
be Austria too, you know, and so they were. It's
(27:27):
a way part of fascism is shoring up that national identity,
which was very fragmented, and it works the same I
think with people's identities. And one of the one of
the things that attracts people to neo Nazism, I think
is this strong affirmation of an identity, and people with
mixed identities or conflicted about it or filled with self
loathing are drawn to this for that reason. One of
(27:49):
the many reasons. People get drawn.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Into these things, and they recruit so young.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
I mean, I think in the book you're talking about this,
you know, all the way back to James Mason's origins
that he became interested in the Nazi Party is a
fourteen year.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
Old joined it, joined it at fourteen.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
So he's a child, right getting into this movement, and
now that he is an old man, he is in
turn in doctrinating children. Right that Adam Woffen members are
very young, I guess were Adam Woffin technically doesn't exist anymore,
but most of the most of the young men who
spilled blood for Adam Waffen were twenty years old, nineteen
(28:25):
years old.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
And you know, someone pointed out the founder of the
feuer Krieg Division when he founded it was twelve. He
was arrested when he was thirteen or fourteen, but he
founded it at twelve.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
And which tragic, obviously tragic, heartbreaking, disgusting. But imagine being
one of the adults who is in that.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Group and finding out that your fear was twelve.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
I grew up in the South in an extremely Protestant
area at the height of that like eighties fundamentals Christian
Christian right thing, and there were I knew about. These
are kind of an older thing, child preachers. Have you
ever heard of child preachers? This was a big thing
during the.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah, they speak in tongues and they sort of parrot
the cadence of the way adults speak.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
But if you listen carefully, they're not saying anything.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
If they've memorized the way that adults give these barn
burning you know, adult Protestants Evangelicals give these barn burning sermons,
but they don't necessarily understand what they're saying. And so,
I mean, I think it's pretty common people adults will
do this. They believe in what they're saying. Maybe they
understand it a little better. I think there's a bunch
(29:35):
of post structuralist academics who don't even understand what they're saying.
But that could happen too, And so I think people like, well,
I don't know, I was a pretty smart twelve year old.
Maybe I would understand it better. But you just need
somebody repeating it. It's the slogans and the narratives have
already been formed by others. You're not necessarily innovating on it.
As long as you can repeat the dogma. It doesn't
(29:56):
really matter who's saying. It doesn't matter if you're at
the person is gay or Jewish.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
And I mean the Estonian twelve year old was not
a one off.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
In the Ethan Melzer case a year or two ago,
Ethan Melzer was a US Army private who was trying
to set up his unit in Turkey to be attacked
by Middle Eastern terrorist groups. And the person he was
communicating with online sort of goading him into these acts
was a child.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
It was a child.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
He was the Order of Nine Angles though right he
was ONA. He wasn't a near Nazi, right. I always
try to distinguish there's some nine A's who are not.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
He was at the bleed point of Adam Waffin splinter
group and ONA. He was involved with rape Waffen A
was he?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yeah. The lineage of these groups is so messy.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
I think some of them don't even understand the ideological
lineage of the sect they've ended up in. But Melzer
was at that sort of bleed point where Adam Woffen
was becoming ONA.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
But I think what we're seeing now and definitely in
these last two school shootings in the last month is
a syncretic murder cull. The guy who just did the
nasphoon one was black. But if you start looking at
both of their manifestos, they're referring to all different kinds
of things, some of whom are white supremacists and neo Nazis,
many of whom aren't just other school shooters, and they
(31:12):
don't seem to have a real ideological, necessarily connection to
some of this the political stuff. It's not become an
O nine A. They are founded by neo Nazi and
many of them are Neo Nazis. And so I was
going to say they're not. They don't have to be,
and all the people aren't. And even if you were
supposed to be they are, they aren't all. And so
we're just getting through these various online forums on Telegram
(31:36):
and elsewhere. Sometimes they just spread over all kinds of
the different platforms. We're getting just this syncretic mix of
these things. And this is one of the things that
made nine A and Siege Culture are parallel Mason's ideas,
because Mason's not a Satanist, and in fact, he's recently
denounced Ordered nine Angles, and when he was around Satanists
(31:57):
they were atheist Satanists around the Church of Saint that
when you start saying, hey, we need to commit random
murders in this goal of destroying the like suppose the
Jewish controlled society, so there could be a white arian revolution. Like,
it doesn't matter if you have a really political reason
or if you're thinking that these heretical acts will destroy
somehow the consensus. Reality, you're just trying to go people
(32:20):
into these violent, random acts of terrorism and more random murders, right.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And the end result is the same they're.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
Thinking is the same, and the end results is the same.
So they start cross pollinating. And then what's the difference
between the school shooter cults, you know, and now we
have groups like the Maniac murder cull who are ostensibly political,
ostensibly neo Nazi and Order of nine angle has been
a reality or just like go attack old people from behind.
I mean it's just pathetic stuff. Go, you know, beat
(32:49):
up homeless people and stab them. It's like at some
point often say this and my speeches, and it's become
more and more real. Is like everything blends together in
our society. I think, you know, you start with like
school shooters and it's hard to distinguish them from like
a political mass shooters and from political mass shooters. Right
(33:10):
at one point, it just becomes this one thing that's
like all mixed together because we're having in the United States,
we're having these constant attacks and constant that often the
body account is very high. Like what becomes the difference anymore?
Does it really matter? Like the Allen, Texas guy who
was a Latino neo Nazi who killed a bunch of
people in an outlet mall, this is really a neo
(33:31):
Nazi action, like he was, like clearly if you look
at his stuff or an article called Nazis of Color
about this dynamic. But was his action? How is his
action necessarily any different than like a school shooting or whatever,
or just like you know, it's just like he's going
somewhere and killing random people, Like what is this about?
So I think we're seeing this syncretic murdercal is really
(33:54):
I know other people have different ways of posing this
that is sprawling out on different online platforms and appealing
to very young, alienated people, probably whose whole lives are online.
I think, especially younger people who went through COVID zoomers,
and I guess people younger than that would be Generation
Alpha spend more time online than any other generation. Obviously
(34:14):
they must, and this becomes especially when they're much younger
the horizon of the world right, and if they're in
cells and they're not really connected to other people and
they're not connected to their family like it, it just
drives these impulses more and more, and they don't have
the maturity to look outside of it, or to think
about the repercussions of it, or think of have the
empathy to think about how it's going to affect other
(34:37):
people in their families.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
And so when it comes to Siege, what would you
say its current role in this sort of evolving syncretic
murder culture that we have, is it is Siege's legacy
now just that it's ideological lineage lives on in sort
of the terogram milieu.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Or is it still itself influential?
Speaker 4 (35:09):
Oh, some of this is a question of ideas. I
think sometimes Siege acts as a symbol. People can gesture
that their neo Nazis is a serious neo Nazi four
hundred and fifty page tone.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
They didn't read it, they didn't all read it.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Yeah, I know, read Siege just like, how many of
you have read Siege? And I found out doing the
work that there's like an edited one hundred page version,
and then there's like a little pocket version, and then
someone even made the ten Tenants of Siege.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
There's the spark notes murder called.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Well Adam Waften Division apparently had a test on Siege
to get in. And I'm like, I know these people
didn't write. They're like a lot of very disturbed or
you know, people who aren't going to like it's a
boring text. I mean I read it twice in like, I've.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Read portions, but I'm not going to sit here and
say I read the whole book.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
It's four hundred and fifty page.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Man, I read every news letter and the book and
it's yes, no, oh. So it acts as the symbol
to be like, look, we have a serious intellectual thing.
How many Christians have read the Bible. Let's be really sorting.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
I think, yeah, I think that's the right analogy, right,
that it is a foundational text, but they're not all
sitting down and digesting or even understanding it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
I mean, how many Communists have read Dos Capital, even
just volume one, which I have. I would like to
say I have, actually, is it more or less boring
than siege? It's more intellectual and so there's that, and
there's also like the conclusions are there, right, the whole
argument is developed in siege. But you really just need
to take the conclusions, which is, you can't do any
(36:41):
political work. It's hopeless. You need to go out and
commit dramatic acts of violence to help inspire people, and
then you know, maybe afterwards there'll be some aryan blah
blah blah. Frankly, that's all you need to know about it,
because that's what it advocates. You just need the praxis
that it concludes. And most actstivists aren't intellectuals. Like I
(37:02):
always say, like a movement can have three slogans and
what you need to do on the left, you need
to make sure those are the right slogans pointing in
the right direction, because somebody who flows into activism who's young,
who it doesn't matter if they're young, doesn't have a
background of politics, is going to take the thing seriously
that you say. And you can only say so many
things to people. Political movements are stupid. I mean, this
(37:22):
is why we are. The ninety nine percent was great,
it was great, it wasn't true. I mean half of
Americans are like it, you know, support the Republicans, but like,
it's like one thing, and then the person can think
about those things. They're not going to have complicated ideas.
So what is what are the slogans that come out
of something? What are the basic what does it boil
down to the things you're saying? And people have inherited
(37:43):
that from Siege or inherited it secondhand, you know, because
Terogram is very well versed in what Siege is about.
I mean Adam often had to read it, so they
were more I think, into it as a text. And
then as it's gone out, you know, Tarogram people, the
Tterogram collective certainly knew what was in it and stuff,
(38:03):
and so people are being affected by it even if
they don't know, even if they haven't read, or even
if they don't know, that's the origin of those ideas.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
So Terogram is directly downstream of Siege. Right.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
So Siege was a newsletter that became a book. People
read the book, and the people who read that book
turned it back into a zine. Right, So it's it's
sort of oh to someone it's moving through its phases
and now it's regressing back into sort of mimetic zine form.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
But people who join these movements who want something more intellectual,
because everyone who joins a religious or political movement, some
people want a more rigorous They're like, well, what's the
reason for this? Well, I have these questions. How do
you answer them? What is why are we doing this?
Want more rigorous? Some people want a more rigorous background
can turn to siege, and as they get older, will
turn to siege or move out of it. And they're like,
(38:50):
what were the ideas behind this? Why did we have
these ideas? And I think that's it's normal. I mean,
there are all kinds of weird intellectual groundings for white supremacists.
A lot of it is theology, which is sort of curious.
And I kind of concluded at some point that you
just needed something complicated because they couldn't use race science anymore,
and there weren't people who developed social science other than
(39:12):
someone like Alndebenoist, who's saying something much more complicated than
most white supremacs are. And so like theology just allowed
something intellectual for people to chew on, you know what
I mean, Like people are real smart who are very
analytical want something to chew on with the ideas, whether
it really changes their practice or not. And I think
there has to be something that serves that need.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
And so I guess wrapping up, because we're supposed to
keep these daily shows short. What is the takeaway that
you want people to to come away from this book with?
I guess, especially in this political moment.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
I think there's two things. The book has two things. One,
I just want to have people have a better understanding
of neo Nazism in the US and how it developed.
It's just one big blur. It's part of other things,
and I see it as a distinct strain. And I
want people to have a just a better understan standing
of that political movement's origins, which is maybe a more
(40:03):
scholarly thing. And I am my next book, I hope
if I can get a contract, is to write a
history of national socialism in America, because again, there's not
a single book that describes that, which is very strange.
Certainly not a history post war, and there may be
a pre war one, but not one that puts it
all together. So there's a lot of ignorance about this movement.
And the second part about the cultural actors is about
(40:23):
the danger of taking a radical cultural movement and to
use impulses like transgression and turn them into the very
toxic politics, into terrorist politics. At the end of the day,
I had a discussion on Blue Sky. It was amazing.
You could see. It wasn't Twitter. I had a useful
discussion on Blue Sky and where I learned something. It
(40:44):
was just fabulous. And it was this woman posted that,
which is like essentially in Matzau I read it. In
the twentieth century, there was always this assumption that transgressive art,
avant garde art was implicitly progressive. Sometimes it was ideological,
but even and it wasn't even when it had some
dodgy elements, the impulse of it led to progressive, left
(41:08):
leaning politics, and it's very transgression was progressive. And I mean,
these guys I'm looking at are and working in the
eighties and you see it now. We've all seen it
with four Chan like that was never that isn't true,
and that was never true true, right. I mean, those
of us in the punk scene in the eighties and
nineties could see this, even if we certainly didn't put
it that way. With like skinheads in particular. It was
(41:29):
contested terrain where people were trying to take the subculture
and pull it to the left and right right. There
were so many Nazis, but there were anti fascist skinheads too, Sharps.
Sharps to some extent, Sharps were a lot of them
are righting nationalists, they just weren't just Nazis. This is
a common There was grips like rash Red and anarchist
skinheads who still exist, but there was a contested terrain
(41:50):
where people trying to pull it in different directions. This
is still the case in neo folk and heathen religious circles,
and that's sort of you. There's an implication which I
don't think I can only like put it into words now,
that like the transgressive elements of these subcultures didn't necessarily
go one way or the other, and it was something
you'd have to fight over, like they could go in
(42:10):
any direction. And I think it was clear in four
Chan early on. I once was mentioned very early on
in four Chan and someone chimed in and they're like,
leave him alone, he's my friend. And I'm like, which
of my friends are on four Chan and defending me?
But like four Chan didn't have to end up the
way it did. You know, the earlier internet culture wasn't
like this. It was progressive or libertarian, or a more
(42:33):
decent libertarian for reading of libertarianism than we have now.
So that's the second part. I mean, other than these guys,
if you ever were in the industrial or neo folk
scene and you heard about there's Nazis, I have all
of the receipt in detail in the book. If that's
of interest to you.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Yeah, Boyd Rice will tell you he never meant it,
but I've read some of the primary documents that lead
me to believe otherwise.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
And I even made a video of him creatively entitled
Boyd Rice New Nazi Collaborator. And I know you're like Spencer,
what are you really getting at here? And I show
the letters and stuff, and just if you're not familiar
with these figures, I know a lot of people there
were very obscure movements at the time, and you know,
people are not familiar with them, But I think are
familiar enough with this idea of like a super radical
(43:15):
cultural movement about step by step I show how it
can move into fully politicized a transgressive movement can move
into a fully politicized, super toxic neo Nazism that is
espousing terrorism, and that that this is something that we
always have to watch out for in our own religious
movements and our own cultural movements and accult circles. I
(43:36):
just did a podcast with some you know, a cult
style esoteric podcast, and I'm talking about Satanists to become Nazis.
Satanists are sort of i would say split these days,
but there's definitely a Nazi, you know, peace in there
are a very visible one. And so some of it's
just about these things.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
That's an important takeaway too that you know, in any subculture,
especially the sort of transgressive subcultures like you know, counterculture
music and art, and you know, occult spaces have a
magical practice that you engage in people who engage in,
you know, practice pagan faiths in all these subcultures, you
need to call out these bad actors early and often
(44:14):
push back, don't let them bully you, and push them
out of your.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
Spaces absolutely, and Nazis ruin everything. They intentionally go into
all these spaces and sometimes don't intentionally. Actually this was
a comment on Stormfront. I learned from talking about Nazis
and the animal rights movement, and they're like, Spencer doesn't understand.
We're not infiltrating these movements. We're just vegans. We're just
(44:37):
also Nazis. Like, but we're not vegans because we're Nazis.
We're not coming here from some other reason.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Well, you can't let them sit with you either way.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
Well, this is a funny story. I don't know if
you have tied, but I heard this story from a
friend of mine that they were in a vegan group
in southern California, I think, and they had a unofficial party,
like a barbecue. It's people from the group, from the
group doing it. People brought their partners. It wasn't an
official group function. But this one member of the group
brought her husband, who is Kevin McDonald. Oh, and they
(45:09):
were vegetarians or vegans, and people were like holy fuck.
And he was like, I mean, I feel a little
sympathetic to him. He's like, hey, man, I don't know,
I'm just I'm a I'm a vegetarian or whatever. I'm
here with my wife. She's going to a party.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Like, no, you're not allowed to have friends. You're not
allowed to have friends you're not allowed to have hobbies,
you can't be here.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
Yeah, but he's like, I'm not here to recruit anyone.
I'm here, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
It's the barbecue is over when the race scientist shows up.
Speaker 4 (45:36):
Well, this became a big discussion in the group about
whether to push him out or not. But you have
to do these things. And if you even if you
don't want to, they're my friend or everyone's welcome or whatever.
What is gonna end up happening if you don't push
the Nazi.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
Out is that more Nazis show up.
Speaker 4 (45:51):
Well, if it's a single person, people are gonna start leaving.
People of color are gonna leave, Jews are gonna leave,
LGBTQ plus people are gonna leave, and you're gonna end
up the one person losing many more So, even just
on your own, you know, enlightened self interest if you
want to keep your group together. And I've seen this
again and again and again, and then they're like, you're
defending a Nazi, so you're one too, So yeah, you
(46:13):
got to kick these people out, even just for practical reasons.
I have a very low bar for people these days,
and I try to appeal I try to appeal to
the baser reasons sometimes with people.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
You know well.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
If you would like to learn more about how a
couple of guys in the counterculture movement in the eighties
are responsible for the publication of the book that serves
as the bible for modern Nazi terrorism, you can pick
up a copy of Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism,
The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege by Spencer
Sunshine from Routlige Press is available, I think wherever books
(46:47):
are sold. I bought my copy directly from the publisher
Routledge Press. I think it was only twenty seven dollars.
You know, a bargain and a steal, So pick up
a copy of that and where else can people find
your work?
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Spencer, thank you for now that you mentioned that. I
am on all of the socials usually at Transform sixty
seven eight nine. Have a webpage if you want. If
you have an RSS feed. If someone said this recently,
they're like, it's actually one of the better ways to
keep track of people, as like this is your follow
rezillion people anyway, Spencersunshine dot com. Also, if you'd like
to support anti fascist research and get a warm, fuzzy feeling.
(47:22):
You should sign up for my Patreon for as little
as two dollars a month. You can help me out
with the rent and get some exclusive content. So yeah,
hell yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 4 (47:33):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. It's been great.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on me,
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
You can now find sources for It could Happen Here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Coll Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hey, everybody, Molly here. I know it's not Thursday. This
isn't a new episode of Weird Little Guys, but I
think it is something you might enjoy. There's a book
that comes up a lot on this show, a book
called Siege by James Mason. It's a foundational text for
the modern neo Nazi terrorist. It was required reading for
(00:30):
members of the Neo Nazi terrorist organization Adam Woffin, and
it was written by a guy whose life was absolutely
weird enough for his own series of episodes. One of
these days, this is an interview with the author of
a book about that book, and I had a great
time talking with Spencer Sunshine about his book Neo Nazi
(00:50):
Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, The Origins and Afterlife of James
Mason's Siege. I don't actually recommend reading Siege, but if
you're interested in that text, you should definitely check out
Spencer's book about it. The interview went up earlier this
week as an episode of it could happen here another
show on the Cool Zone Media network. But I know
(01:11):
now everybody subscribes to all the shows on the network,
even if you should, and I thought you all might
enjoy this too. It provides a little more context for
that weird Nazi book I keep bringing up. So if
you haven't already heard this episode on another feed, I
hope you'll give it a listener.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I am once again your occasional host, Molly Conker, and
I am joined today by Spencer Sunshine, the author of
Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, The Origins and Afterlife
of James Mason's Siege. It's available now in paperback. I
have my paperback copy from Ritledge Press. So Spencer, I
guess let's get right into it.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
What is Siege and why should we still be talking
about it?
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Well, unfortunately, we should still be talking about it because
it's still influential. It was a book originally published in
nineteen ninety three, but that is an edited version of
newsletters published in the eighties by a fellow named James Mason,
who is a lifelong neo Nazi. He joined the American
Nazi Party at age fourteen in nineteen sixty six. He
is still an active ideological believer in national socialism. It's
(02:22):
a book that in it he makes the argument that
any kind of normal legal political activity was pointless for
neo Nazis to engage in and like forming organizations, holding marches,
making the traditional propaganda, trying to build up parties, even
guerrilla warfare. At the end of it, he becomes very
cynical about and he says, through what are essentially dramatic
(02:46):
random acts of violence, of terrorism or murder. He even
goes into praising serial killers like Joseph Paul Franklin, we
can destabilize the government and society and after this neo
Nazis can come to pay. This has become a very
influential idea. More recently he was rediscovered. It was a
pretty obscure The newsletters were very unpopular that he never
(03:08):
made more than one hundred copies. The original book had
a print run of one thousand, so it was a
sort of obscure text. It was known amongst neo Nazi
circles for some unusual reasons. It became mixed up with
some countercultural figures and that was actually what made it
more well known. But it was revived in twenty fifteen.
It was found by these younger aspiring terrorists, let's say
(03:32):
at the time around a message board called Iron March.
It became the bible of the Adam Offin Division, this
neo Nazi group that its members and associates killed five people,
and out of that everyone in the Adam off And
Division had to read Siege, which became the hashtag. And
out of that grew this whole sort of network, first
(03:53):
of groups and now really totally decentralized like propaganda channels
on Telegram, dub Terogram promoting these same ideas, and so
it's become very influential today. It gets named in like
terrorist manifestos. The school shooter, I think it was in Nashville,
Tennessee that just happened. He makes a reference to people
(04:14):
who are into siege in his writings, and more and
more I've documented before him at least twelve murders that
are either by the Adam Waffin Division, by people inspired
by Siege culture, or by people directly linked to Terogram.
So if we want to look at the main text
animating neo Nazi terrorism today, which has now spread around
the globe, of this groups in Latin America, there's groups
(04:35):
in eastern Western Europe. It's even influencing groups in the
Middle East. Or people in the Middle East. They're called accelerationists.
They want to accelerate the collapse of things. And if
there's a single ideological text today that's influential on the scene,
it is by easily James Mason Siege.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And what I particularly am enjoying about the book, I
just told you before we started recording.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I haven't finished it yet.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
What I'm enjoying about this book is so you know,
you were saying that Sames Mason started writing this in
the eighties, right, but nobody was reading it. It was
very sort of niche. It wasn't popular, even within its
own niche. He was not a popular man. He had
a lot of beefs with other leaders in the movement.
It's rediscovered in the twenty tens. It's big on Iron March.
It's the animating force behind Adam Waffin. And so all
(05:17):
of a sudden in the last ten years, people like us,
you know, researchers of the far right, mainstream journalists, people
are talking about Siege, they're talking about Mason. But this,
I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is the only
book sort of tracing it back to its root. James
Mason did not come into existence in twenty fifteen on
the pages of Iron March. Right, they sort of dug
(05:39):
back up this writing that was at that point thirty
years old. But this book, I mean, it's an incredible
work of research, but it's also sort of a picuresque, right.
It follows James Mason through decades of Nazi history.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
He wasn't just a guy who wrote a newsletter. He
was a guy who was in a lot of rooms.
He knew a lot of people. So through the leg
of James Mason's life, you can follow the origins of
the modern neo Nazi movement back to the sort of
splinters and sects and rival personalities of the seventies. Right
that you can't understand modern neo Nazi organizing if you
(06:16):
don't know the history that goes back to the sixties
and seventies.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Well thank you forgetting that. I had someone write a
review and it was an interesting view from the viewpoint
of literary criticism, and he's like, well, this is one
of these books about a book it's not And I'm like, yeah,
it kind of is, but it's really And I started
after I started writing this which has an unusual origin
or just maybe it is a usual origin. Like the
first half is about Neo Nazism in the nineteen seventies,
(06:40):
which is incredibly undocumented. There's a huge problem with a
documentation about the far right in general before twenty fifteen.
Probably more books have come out in the last ten
years about the far right in the US before twenty
fifteen than came out before, and certainly about neo Nazis,
who are almost always when they are written about American
(07:00):
neo Nazis, it's usually in a history of the white
supremacist movement, and there's no differentiation made between them, and
I would say the National Socialists are quite different from
other white supremacists for a variety of different reasons. So
there is no book about Neo Nazism in the nineteen
seventies in the US at all. There are only two
documents I can really name, and they're both written by
(07:21):
National Socialists actually, one in Australia and one the head
of the New Order which used to be the American
Nazi Party. It's actually not bad. It's an eight part
series by Martin Kirk. So the first half is really
reconstructing what happened in the nineteen seventies because this is
what Siege is coming out of. This Siege is an
answer to the questions that faced neo Nazis in the
nineteen seventies. And then the second half of the book
(07:44):
is even I would say less about Mason. It's about
these four countercultural figures who discover Mason, help publish him,
and eventually published and disseminated Siege itself. And part of
that is I was just around the scene these people
were part of in the nineteen nineties. Like I saw
one of them, boyd Rice play. I had many mutual
friends with another, the publisher Adam Parfrey of Farrell House.
(08:05):
So like, I was like right around what these people
were doing as part of the nineties counterculture. So I
became very interested in that because these people always denied
their background, you know, or s left it off or something.
And I found just so many smoking guns in this
And so I will say how this started is right
after Charlottesville. They unite the Right rally at Charlottesville. Always
(08:27):
you say these things and just you give the name
of the thing, and people are like, wait a minute,
that's like where I live. You know, we're more than that,
you know. I was in Seattle. I was like, oh,
I was at Seattle, referring to this nineteen ninety nine demonstration,
and I'm like, people are here, weren't even necessarily born then,
and just saying at Seattle doesn't mean anything. So after
Unite the Right, there was a spike in popularity in
(08:49):
Siege and the hashtag read siege because it looked like
the rally followed what he said, and he said, no
one in American society will allow neo Nazis to succeed.
And a lot of people don't know this, but what
happened at the initial rally is that it wasn't the
street fighting people might be familiar with, even that's fading
from memory. Was before it was supposed to start, And
(09:10):
when it was supposed to start at noon, the police,
who had been standing a block away and letting everything unfold,
marched in and forced everyone out, meaning the rally never happened.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Nobody ever gave a speech.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
Nobody gave a speech. As we know, the car attack
happened like an hour or two later. I got to
look at a timeline, it's all like garbled now right, Yeah,
that sounds right. And the book is co dedicated to
Heather hair I just want to point out. So it
seemed to coincide with what Mason said. He's like, you
can't do legal work, you have to do a terrorism right,
(09:41):
And so there was a spike and interest in it,
and Adam Offfen had been doing more and more. Adam
often people are committing murders, strange murders. They're all very
strange murders, which I think speaks to a lot of
the personalities who are involved in this and other forms
of violence. Even in more structured political movements. I think
it does a tends to attract fringe people, except at
(10:02):
certain times where people are intentionally using it as a
strategy as part of a bigger mass movement. Anyway, these
are questions for terrorism studies, and so there was a
spike of interest in it. So I was going to
write a short article for a think tank I used
to be associated with, which I will not name because
I had such a bad experience with them, and it
was going to be an article. I couldn't get the
facts to line up. As I said, there's terrible scholarship
(10:23):
about this period, and so I used this very sophisticated
research tool called Google, and through that I found that
Mason's papers. There was a huge collection of Mason's papers
at the University of Kansas and Lawrence, Kansas, so I
decided I'd go there. I thought I'd just straighten these
things out. There were some documents I needed, some very
obscure fanzines and stuff. That'd be the end of the day.
(10:46):
I got through. Well, first I discovered it's not easy
to get to Lawrence, Kansas. You have to fly into
an airport, and then I think I took an uber
for like an hour. There was like one bus a
day or something. Anyway, I got there and started poking
at the papers. It was sixty boxes of his core respondents.
He had letters incoming and outgoing since the early nineteen sixties.
As you mentioned, he was an insider to the neo
(11:06):
Nazi movement, so it was with all these people he
had kept carving copies of his outgoing letters. Was a
unique slice of national socialist life in the United States.
Never seen an archive like it. People didn't keep their
papers because they were doing illegal activities. The government sees
them and has them in a warehouse somewhere or whatever.
This is even in the pre Internet. I can only
do this because it was pre Internet, and there were
(11:27):
paper copies of stuff and of the age where I
grew up doing all research on paper and in archives.
And I quickly found out what I had. And there
were two things. One, as I said, was that there
was this whole story of American neo Nazism, of when
the American Nazi Party splinters then called the National Socialist
White People's Party in the nineteen seventies, and all these
(11:48):
groups come out of it, many of which we know
parts of, like William Peters who wrote the Turner Diaries
and the Skoky incident which is parodied in The Blues Brothers.
Some people don't know this, just so Paul Franklin shooting
and paralyzing the publisher Larry Flint, and some other things.
And I was like, Oh, these are all people who
came out of one thing, a splintering of the party.
And I realized that there basically was a terrorist wing
(12:09):
that came out of the splintering. And people knew Mason
and people knew Pierce, but there was like a couple
other groups or people, but people didn't put it together
that they were all like the most radical wing of
these splinter groups. So there was that story and then,
as I mentioned, there was a second story about these
kuntercultural people who had always denied that they were involved
in national socialism or the level of it. It was
(12:31):
just a joke, all these things that we hear today,
almost word for word. And so I found all their
letters to James Mason, and they're adorned with swastikas and
eight aids, and they're helping him. Had they reveal the
extent that they helped him? And the funny thing is
a lot of this stuff was actually available and out
in the open. It was published books, but it was
like little pieces of flakes of gold scattered around everything,
(12:53):
and I started picking them up because I realized you
could put them together. And so one article turned out
was supposed to be one article, and then it turns
two articles. And I sat down to write it and
turned into a book. And then five years later I
finally had the manuscript done. Then took another year at
the publishers, and then it came out last year. So
it's been seven years of work, and I've been going
(13:13):
around doing talks. I did seventeen talks and supported the
book and as many podcasts and stuff. So I'm still
The book is still part of my life, as much
as I would like to sort of put it down.
But thank you for remedy on the podcast. This is
not great they have me on the podcast. Not against
no diss against you, no shade, no shade no.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
And I'm so I'm so jealous of your trip to
Kansas to see the archives. I only recently a year
or two, discovered that his papers existed in those archives,
and so I wrote to the archivist and I said, like,
you know, are any of these digitized? I would love
to see them. And there's like, you know, we've only
digitized like one box. And they sent me a couple
of a couple of scans, but most of it has
not been digitized. So you have to go to Kansas
(13:53):
if you want to read this old pedophile Nazis letters
to Charles Manson.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Well, I do have thousands of pictures I took of
this correspondence. So yeah, if you request digital copies, they
won't tell you what they've digitized. And so it's it's
like you know, trying to like randomly throw darts or something.
If you get the right file, they have them.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
And I was like, I was begging and pleading, I
was like, please, just like any letters you have with
Bob Heyke, I just I just want the Bob Hike letters.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
But I can give you the Bob Hyke letters.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I would love those.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
I think they'll they'll digitize stuff for a price.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Though, I'm sure. I'm sure if I pay for it,
they would do me the favor.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
But that's the thing, is that there's so much interconnection
here because these stories always get told episodically, right, like
the story of James Mason and Adam Woffen, the story
of William Luther Peers, the story of the founding of
the National Socialist Movement. But nobody takes those pieces and
slots them together because they interlock. They all interlock, right,
(14:51):
And so this idea of the lone wolf, I mean,
I guess James Mason's life's work is to perpetuate and
motivate the lone wolf. But is it really a lone
wolf if he's training them.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Well, the lone wolf question is is a long question.
A lot of people know Metzger moved to the lone
wolf strategy after a war was sued by the SPLC
and collapse, but Mason was advocating this beforehand and was
very tight with Metzger. So there is actually a book
describing what you've said, putting the pieces together, and it's
called Neo Nazi Terrorism and Counterculturals exactly. It's the I
(15:24):
think which you can buy today.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I mean, like I said, it is the only book
that I know of that fits these pieces together.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
No, it is the only book. Actually, I've been in
contact with James Mason, and he said when radio interview,
it's not the first of its kind, but it's the
best of its kind.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
A high praise from the book's Nazi pedophile subject. Why
did he donate his papers to the library, because, like
you said, most people are not not only not per
deserving these items where they're not preserving them at all
(16:02):
because they know what they've done is illegal or embarrassing
to everyone involved, and they're intentionally destroying the evidence of
these kinds of communications. But he not only saved them,
but he wanted to make sure we could read them.
Did you talk to him at all about why he
did that?
Speaker 4 (16:16):
Well, he sold them. He was a wheeler dealer in
especially American Nazi Party memorabilia. You know, he sold furniture
on the side like antiques. He'd go antiquing, and he
if you've seen pictures of his apartment, it's filled with
Nazi nickknacks. Right, he's got a knife collection.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
I mean, it looks like it looks like the Area
Nation's booth at the Tulsa Gun Show.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
It looks like my apartment, but like the in the
inverse and fewer plants. So he was a collector, so
he was already on. My understanding is he was already
selling George Lincoln Rockwell memoryabilia or whatever, papers and such.
Two Kansas. They have this collection there called the Wilcox
Collection of anti Extremist stuff. This guy, Lair Wilcox, had
(17:00):
been in early students for Democratic Society before they took
the like Marxist turn, and then decided that the left
and the right were the same, like in the seventies
or something, and started collecting all this material. So they
were one of the they're probably the biggest collection of far
right material. And as I said, at the time, libraries
weren't collecting it and people weren't writing about it. They
were like, oh, these are just a bunch of kooks
(17:22):
and wing nuts. They're not important. And some of this
is because, like as I say in the book, the
first neo Nazi mass murder wasn't until the late seventies,
like it was what we know as neo Nazism today
really only emerged in the seventies, is when my arguments
in the book. So the papers were there because he
sold them. The second thing is he is unique, I
(17:43):
think not unique, but very uncommon because he is an
unabashed neo Nazi. He does not try to hide it.
He is not like the NSM, which is actually a
party he co founded shockingly but left over it as
they turned because originally it was to promote violence, and
then as it turned to a more traditional Hollywood Nazi party,
he left. But it's the same one that was at Charlottesville,
(18:04):
and Jeff's Scoop was the head of I actually taught
Jeff Scoop about how the party was founded. That was
very interesting. I interviewed him for the book.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Another one of those dishonest actors.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Well, the guy who had made him the head of
the party, who was actually the second head, Harrington, cliff Harrington.
Clifford Harrington did not give him the truthful account of
the parties founding. Harrington claimed he was a co founder
and he wasn't he claimed a different date. This is
one reason I spent so much time on stuff. Also
that I found all these things that had been printed
that were wrong. The bi scholars and others that were
(18:35):
and it wasn't their fault. They were taken. It was
hard to get these harder to get these documents, especially
when a group is moving. And so Harrington claimed he
had been a co founder in nineteen seventy four or whatever,
but he was lying. Mason was one of the co
founders and not him. He only became the head in
the eighties. So this is some of this stuff I found. Anyway,
(18:55):
I was going to say the NSM at one point
go where not Neo Nazis were National Socialists.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
I was like, get the fuck out of here, like really,
like come all, your flag is a swastikonic ah. I mean,
this is absurd, but people will do that, right, It's
like the Dead Parrots skit in Monty Python.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
If people know this and so. But Mason stands out
because he's always been very upfront about his views. He's
very proud of them. He's not ashamed, and if it's
embarrassed other people, they didn't belong. He's as he told
to me they didn't believe in the One True religion.
So I asked him about these counterculture figures who have
denied they were ever involved in this stuff. At the time,
he was convinced they were National socialists, and he was like, well,
(19:35):
they believed in something else other than the One True Faith.
I think that's the word he used. So yeah, he
is nothing to hide. He's very open about it, very
open about promoting terrorism, as you know, and maybe some
of the listeners do. Young neo Nazis go to his
apartment and he tutors them. They take pictures with him.
This included Sam Woodward, who murdered a young gay Jewish man,
(19:56):
Blaze Bernstein recently sent his to life in prison. There's
picture is a Woodword in Mason's apartment. So yeah, I
mean he wants is He's proud of his lineage and
he wants it documented. And I know I did him
a favor by writing a book about his movement. I mean,
they don't have the intellectuals and the resources to in
the train people to write historical books, and I did
(20:17):
it a pretty straight up book. Even Mason was like,
I kept waiting to read the smear I kept waiting
for the smear. There was no smear. I was like, yeah,
I just wrote it as a history book, and so
in a way I've given them an insight into their
history which wouldn't exist otherwise. So this stuff is always
a double edged sword when you cover as you know,
when you cover fascist groups, they want the publicity, by
(20:38):
and large. I was told sometimes at the SPLC, like
groups contact them and they're like, cover us, give us.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Coverage, sending them their press releases.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
But I mean, I think someone like Mason, I guess
he doesn't see this smear because, like you said, he's
proud of himself. So this is I think is an
honest appraisal of his legacy, and most people would see
that as a but he's proud of it.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Well, it's not a smear. I don't need to say
anything bad about him. He's there promoting Nazi terrorism. What's
the point of, like, you know, denouncing this or something.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
I mean, Whereas I think someone like Pierce, I think
sometimes when people write honestly about Pierre, obviously he's been
dead for twenty five years, but he resisted the characterization
that he was inciting terrorism, even though he like Mason
very much, was.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Oh well, Pierce is just a liar. I mean, all
these guys exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
That's what I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
But I think a book like this about Pierce, I
think he would not have enjoyed, whereas Mason is at
least honest about his legacy.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
You know, there is a terrible book about Pierce by
one of the sycophants who is a professor actually Griffin.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah, and that again, that is one of those dishonest histories.
I think we were talking before we started recording that
the problem with archival research trying to write a history
of these movements is they are dishonest actors.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
And so Robert S. Griffin, he wrote, what is it
the fame of a dead Man's Deeds? Is that what
it's called?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
He went into it, you know, saying like, I'm going
to write this neutral appraisal of this figure of the movement,
about William Luther Pierce. And over the weeks that he
spent on the compound to write it, and he spent
time with Peers on the compound in Hillsborough, became radicalized
and is a Nazi. Now are he still alive? I mean,
he could take issue with that characterization if he wants.
(22:22):
But I'm sure you've read the book.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
It's not neutral. It's a has giography of Peers.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Yeah. There's actually a book by Pierce's son too, which
is interesting.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
I've read that. It's quite good.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Well, unfortunately a lot of it's copy pasta.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
But.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
I think his insight into his relationship with his father
is very unique. It is called The Sins of My
Father by Kelvin Pearce. I mean, that's a window you
don't often get, although I guess now we do also
have the Klansman's Son by Don Black's daughter.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
Black's daughter or son.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
She has transitions.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Oh, I did not know that, well, Mazeltov. Yeah, yeah,
I remember reading their work before Trump, and they actually
wrote one of the most moving resignations from the movement
that I've read, very much taking you know, being accountable,
even though they were raised in it. And I feel like
children raised in this are not like as accountable as
adults are, right, especially like they were in college at
(23:17):
the time. But it was like a true interesting working
through it, and I felt like heartfelt apology for it.
And yeah, actually this is a fun fact. You may
know a member of the Aryan Nationalist Action A and A.
This terrorist is a bank robbing group from the eighties,
I think became the first person to transition gender.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
From Donald Lanyan.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Donna Langen was known as pretty Boy Pedro when she
was the head of the Argan Republican Armies, a bank
robbery gang out of Ellaheim City. Yeah, she was the
first person to win a battle with the federal government
to transition in federal.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Prison to get surgery.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
And just recently, actually, there was a filing in her case.
She's trying to get the way the case is titled
in the court records is still Peter Langan, her dead name,
and the judge denied her petition to retitle the case.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
But she has transitioned and is in a women's prison.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Is she in Texas?
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Oh gosh, I could look up in the BOP where
she is.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Texas bans prisoners from changing their names.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
She is in FMC cars.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Well, that isn't in Dallas, Texas. Yea, yeah, that's why.
That's why.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
So she's still in the BOP system under her dead name,
but she was allowed to physically transition. So that's again
just a strange twist of history, right, that the person
who won that legal model for us was a Nazi
bank robber.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Well, she has also long repudiated those politics. So I
think she's been the only person to have surgery transperson
has surgery who was in prisoned at the time, because
I think that was recently and then everything, you know,
everything they changed. They I know that they slowed down
their transpower waiting to see the results of the election.
(25:02):
So for a strange reason, I know, actually a bunch
of the stuff about trans people in prison and so anyway.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
No, it's I mean, it's a remarkable, remarkable history.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah, So you started writing this book after Unite the Right.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Because there was this renewed interest in siege.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I mean, because what has the experience been, like, you know,
over the course of spending the last six years of
your life working on this, realizing that it is only
becoming more relevant and not less.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Well, the problem is is like for people like us
who watch the far right, like our work is only
important or people are only interested in it when there
is a big upswing, and then like that's when people
are interested and that's when it is more important. So
on one hand, it's good that I didn't spend five
years and then no one remembered what siege was and
it was just a blip. I mean, that's good for me,
(25:49):
but I have to say what's good for me is
bad for society.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
And so, I mean, I think it would have been
an important work of history regardless. But I guess as
you're working on it, realizing that the body count is
only growing.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Yeah, it's I don't know, I don't really you know,
what do you say about that? I call these people
empty people spreading emptiness. Like it's hard for me even
to get mad at the more aggressive neo Nazis and
white supremacists. Like often they're young, and I just see
like sad young people who can't deal with their problems,
(26:22):
engaged in like hurting other people who are often not
so different than them, you know. I mean there's a
trans man who was in Adam. Often, you know, like
they're yeah, numerous stories of people being you know, of
not white descent, either they're hiding that they're not, or
they're a mixed race descent and they're sort of passing
(26:43):
as wide of being Jewish and being queer, all this stuff.
The movement's filled with these people. Sometimes it's the people
are even like how many straight white men are there
in the movement, Like and it's just sad. You're like,
I see you're being attracted to this because you're so
alienated or you were so your identity is so shaky
that you are attracted to this idea of a firm,
(27:05):
strong identity. And I mean sometimes people forget fascism in
Italy and Germany arose and basically the last two countries
that arose and solidified in Europe, Like those were countries
that wasn't clear what Italy was going to be. There's
such differences between the north and the south. There's no reason,
Like it was unclear originally whether Germany was going to
be Austria too, you know, and so they were. It's
(27:27):
a way part of fascism is shoring up that national identity,
which was very fragmented, and it works the same I
think with people's identities. And one of the one of
the things that attracts people to neo Nazism, I think
is this strong affirmation of an identity, and people with
mixed identities or conflicted about it or filled with self
loathing are drawn to this for that reason. One of
(27:49):
the many reasons. People get drawn.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Into these things, and they recruit so young.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
I mean, I think in the book you're talking about this,
you know, all the way back to James Mason's origins
that he became interested in the Nazi Party is a
fourteen year.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
Old joined it, joined it at fourteen.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
So he's a child, right getting into this movement, and
now that he is an old man, he is in
turn in doctrinating children. Right that Adam Woffen members are
very young, I guess were Adam Woffin technically doesn't exist anymore,
but most of the most of the young men who
spilled blood for Adam Waffen were twenty years old, nineteen
(28:25):
years old.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
And you know, someone pointed out the founder of the
feuer Krieg Division when he founded it was twelve. He
was arrested when he was thirteen or fourteen, but he
founded it at twelve.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
And which tragic, obviously tragic, heartbreaking, disgusting. But imagine being
one of the adults who is in that.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Group and finding out that your fear was twelve.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
I grew up in the South in an extremely Protestant
area at the height of that like eighties fundamentals Christian
Christian right thing, and there were I knew about. These
are kind of an older thing, child preachers. Have you
ever heard of child preachers? This was a big thing
during the.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah, they speak in tongues and they sort of parrot
the cadence of the way adults speak.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
But if you listen carefully, they're not saying anything.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
If they've memorized the way that adults give these barn
burning you know, adult Protestants Evangelicals give these barn burning sermons,
but they don't necessarily understand what they're saying. And so,
I mean, I think it's pretty common people adults will
do this. They believe in what they're saying. Maybe they
understand it a little better. I think there's a bunch
(29:35):
of post structuralist academics who don't even understand what they're saying.
But that could happen too, And so I think people like, well,
I don't know, I was a pretty smart twelve year old.
Maybe I would understand it better. But you just need
somebody repeating it. It's the slogans and the narratives have
already been formed by others. You're not necessarily innovating on it.
As long as you can repeat the dogma. It doesn't
(29:56):
really matter who's saying. It doesn't matter if you're at
the person is gay or Jewish.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
And I mean the Estonian twelve year old was not
a one off.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
In the Ethan Melzer case a year or two ago,
Ethan Melzer was a US Army private who was trying
to set up his unit in Turkey to be attacked
by Middle Eastern terrorist groups. And the person he was
communicating with online sort of goading him into these acts
was a child.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
It was a child.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
He was the Order of Nine Angles though right he
was ONA. He wasn't a near Nazi, right. I always
try to distinguish there's some nine A's who are not.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
He was at the bleed point of Adam Waffin splinter
group and ONA. He was involved with rape Waffen A
was he?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yeah. The lineage of these groups is so messy.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
I think some of them don't even understand the ideological
lineage of the sect they've ended up in. But Melzer
was at that sort of bleed point where Adam Woffen
was becoming ONA.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
But I think what we're seeing now and definitely in
these last two school shootings in the last month is
a syncretic murder cull. The guy who just did the
nasphoon one was black. But if you start looking at
both of their manifestos, they're referring to all different kinds
of things, some of whom are white supremacists and neo Nazis,
many of whom aren't just other school shooters, and they
(31:12):
don't seem to have a real ideological, necessarily connection to
some of this the political stuff. It's not become an
O nine A. They are founded by neo Nazi and
many of them are Neo Nazis. And so I was
going to say they're not. They don't have to be,
and all the people aren't. And even if you were
supposed to be they are, they aren't all. And so
we're just getting through these various online forums on Telegram
(31:36):
and elsewhere. Sometimes they just spread over all kinds of
the different platforms. We're getting just this syncretic mix of
these things. And this is one of the things that
made nine A and Siege Culture are parallel Mason's ideas,
because Mason's not a Satanist, and in fact, he's recently
denounced Ordered nine Angles, and when he was around Satanists
(31:57):
they were atheist Satanists around the Church of Saint that
when you start saying, hey, we need to commit random
murders in this goal of destroying the like suppose the
Jewish controlled society, so there could be a white arian revolution. Like,
it doesn't matter if you have a really political reason
or if you're thinking that these heretical acts will destroy
somehow the consensus. Reality, you're just trying to go people
(32:20):
into these violent, random acts of terrorism and more random murders, right.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And the end result is the same they're.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
Thinking is the same, and the end results is the same.
So they start cross pollinating. And then what's the difference
between the school shooter cults, you know, and now we
have groups like the Maniac murder cull who are ostensibly political,
ostensibly neo Nazi and Order of nine angle has been
a reality or just like go attack old people from behind.
I mean it's just pathetic stuff. Go, you know, beat
(32:49):
up homeless people and stab them. It's like at some
point often say this and my speeches, and it's become
more and more real. Is like everything blends together in
our society. I think, you know, you start with like
school shooters and it's hard to distinguish them from like
a political mass shooters and from political mass shooters. Right
(33:10):
at one point, it just becomes this one thing that's
like all mixed together because we're having in the United States,
we're having these constant attacks and constant that often the
body account is very high. Like what becomes the difference anymore?
Does it really matter? Like the Allen, Texas guy who
was a Latino neo Nazi who killed a bunch of
people in an outlet mall, this is really a neo
(33:31):
Nazi action, like he was, like clearly if you look
at his stuff or an article called Nazis of Color
about this dynamic. But was his action? How is his
action necessarily any different than like a school shooting or whatever,
or just like you know, it's just like he's going
somewhere and killing random people, Like what is this about?
So I think we're seeing this syncretic murdercal is really
(33:54):
I know other people have different ways of posing this
that is sprawling out on different online platforms and appealing
to very young, alienated people, probably whose whole lives are online.
I think, especially younger people who went through COVID zoomers,
and I guess people younger than that would be Generation
Alpha spend more time online than any other generation. Obviously
(34:14):
they must, and this becomes especially when they're much younger
the horizon of the world right, and if they're in
cells and they're not really connected to other people and
they're not connected to their family like it, it just
drives these impulses more and more, and they don't have
the maturity to look outside of it, or to think
about the repercussions of it, or think of have the
empathy to think about how it's going to affect other
(34:37):
people in their families.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
And so when it comes to Siege, what would you
say its current role in this sort of evolving syncretic
murder culture that we have, is it is Siege's legacy
now just that it's ideological lineage lives on in sort
of the terogram milieu.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Or is it still itself influential?
Speaker 4 (35:09):
Oh, some of this is a question of ideas. I
think sometimes Siege acts as a symbol. People can gesture
that their neo Nazis is a serious neo Nazi four
hundred and fifty page tone.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
They didn't read it, they didn't all read it.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Yeah, I know, read Siege just like, how many of
you have read Siege? And I found out doing the
work that there's like an edited one hundred page version,
and then there's like a little pocket version, and then
someone even made the ten Tenants of Siege.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
There's the spark notes murder called.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Well Adam Waften Division apparently had a test on Siege
to get in. And I'm like, I know these people
didn't write. They're like a lot of very disturbed or
you know, people who aren't going to like it's a
boring text. I mean I read it twice in like, I've.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Read portions, but I'm not going to sit here and
say I read the whole book.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
It's four hundred and fifty page.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Man, I read every news letter and the book and
it's yes, no, oh. So it acts as the symbol
to be like, look, we have a serious intellectual thing.
How many Christians have read the Bible. Let's be really sorting.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
I think, yeah, I think that's the right analogy, right,
that it is a foundational text, but they're not all
sitting down and digesting or even understanding it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
I mean, how many Communists have read Dos Capital, even
just volume one, which I have. I would like to
say I have, actually, is it more or less boring
than siege? It's more intellectual and so there's that, and
there's also like the conclusions are there, right, the whole
argument is developed in siege. But you really just need
to take the conclusions, which is, you can't do any
(36:41):
political work. It's hopeless. You need to go out and
commit dramatic acts of violence to help inspire people, and
then you know, maybe afterwards there'll be some aryan blah
blah blah. Frankly, that's all you need to know about it,
because that's what it advocates. You just need the praxis
that it concludes. And most actstivists aren't intellectuals. Like I
(37:02):
always say, like a movement can have three slogans and
what you need to do on the left, you need
to make sure those are the right slogans pointing in
the right direction, because somebody who flows into activism who's young,
who it doesn't matter if they're young, doesn't have a
background of politics, is going to take the thing seriously
that you say. And you can only say so many
things to people. Political movements are stupid. I mean, this
(37:22):
is why we are. The ninety nine percent was great,
it was great, it wasn't true. I mean half of
Americans are like it, you know, support the Republicans, but like,
it's like one thing, and then the person can think
about those things. They're not going to have complicated ideas.
So what is what are the slogans that come out
of something? What are the basic what does it boil
down to the things you're saying? And people have inherited
(37:43):
that from Siege or inherited it secondhand, you know, because
Terogram is very well versed in what Siege is about.
I mean Adam often had to read it, so they
were more I think, into it as a text. And
then as it's gone out, you know, Tarogram people, the
Tterogram collective certainly knew what was in it and stuff,
(38:03):
and so people are being affected by it even if
they don't know, even if they haven't read, or even
if they don't know, that's the origin of those ideas.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
So Terogram is directly downstream of Siege. Right.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
So Siege was a newsletter that became a book. People
read the book, and the people who read that book
turned it back into a zine. Right, So it's it's
sort of oh to someone it's moving through its phases
and now it's regressing back into sort of mimetic zine form.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
But people who join these movements who want something more intellectual,
because everyone who joins a religious or political movement, some
people want a more rigorous They're like, well, what's the
reason for this? Well, I have these questions. How do
you answer them? What is why are we doing this?
Want more rigorous? Some people want a more rigorous background
can turn to siege, and as they get older, will
turn to siege or move out of it. And they're like,
(38:50):
what were the ideas behind this? Why did we have
these ideas? And I think that's it's normal. I mean,
there are all kinds of weird intellectual groundings for white supremacists.
A lot of it is theology, which is sort of curious.
And I kind of concluded at some point that you
just needed something complicated because they couldn't use race science anymore,
and there weren't people who developed social science other than
(39:12):
someone like Alndebenoist, who's saying something much more complicated than
most white supremacs are. And so like theology just allowed
something intellectual for people to chew on, you know what
I mean, Like people are real smart who are very
analytical want something to chew on with the ideas, whether
it really changes their practice or not. And I think
there has to be something that serves that need.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
And so I guess wrapping up, because we're supposed to
keep these daily shows short. What is the takeaway that
you want people to to come away from this book with?
I guess, especially in this political moment.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
I think there's two things. The book has two things. One,
I just want to have people have a better understanding
of neo Nazism in the US and how it developed.
It's just one big blur. It's part of other things,
and I see it as a distinct strain. And I
want people to have a just a better understan standing
of that political movement's origins, which is maybe a more
(40:03):
scholarly thing. And I am my next book, I hope
if I can get a contract, is to write a
history of national socialism in America, because again, there's not
a single book that describes that, which is very strange.
Certainly not a history post war, and there may be
a pre war one, but not one that puts it
all together. So there's a lot of ignorance about this movement.
And the second part about the cultural actors is about
(40:23):
the danger of taking a radical cultural movement and to
use impulses like transgression and turn them into the very
toxic politics, into terrorist politics. At the end of the day,
I had a discussion on Blue Sky. It was amazing.
You could see. It wasn't Twitter. I had a useful
discussion on Blue Sky and where I learned something. It
(40:44):
was just fabulous. And it was this woman posted that,
which is like essentially in Matzau I read it. In
the twentieth century, there was always this assumption that transgressive art,
avant garde art was implicitly progressive. Sometimes it was ideological,
but even and it wasn't even when it had some
dodgy elements, the impulse of it led to progressive, left
(41:08):
leaning politics, and it's very transgression was progressive. And I mean,
these guys I'm looking at are and working in the
eighties and you see it now. We've all seen it
with four Chan like that was never that isn't true,
and that was never true true, right. I mean, those
of us in the punk scene in the eighties and
nineties could see this, even if we certainly didn't put
it that way. With like skinheads in particular. It was
(41:29):
contested terrain where people were trying to take the subculture
and pull it to the left and right right. There
were so many Nazis, but there were anti fascist skinheads too, Sharps.
Sharps to some extent, Sharps were a lot of them
are righting nationalists, they just weren't just Nazis. This is
a common There was grips like rash Red and anarchist
skinheads who still exist, but there was a contested terrain
(41:50):
where people trying to pull it in different directions. This
is still the case in neo folk and heathen religious circles,
and that's sort of you. There's an implication which I
don't think I can only like put it into words now,
that like the transgressive elements of these subcultures didn't necessarily
go one way or the other, and it was something
you'd have to fight over, like they could go in
(42:10):
any direction. And I think it was clear in four
Chan early on. I once was mentioned very early on
in four Chan and someone chimed in and they're like,
leave him alone, he's my friend. And I'm like, which
of my friends are on four Chan and defending me?
But like four Chan didn't have to end up the
way it did. You know, the earlier internet culture wasn't
like this. It was progressive or libertarian, or a more
(42:33):
decent libertarian for reading of libertarianism than we have now.
So that's the second part. I mean, other than these guys,
if you ever were in the industrial or neo folk
scene and you heard about there's Nazis, I have all
of the receipt in detail in the book. If that's
of interest to you.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Yeah, Boyd Rice will tell you he never meant it,
but I've read some of the primary documents that lead
me to believe otherwise.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
And I even made a video of him creatively entitled
Boyd Rice New Nazi Collaborator. And I know you're like Spencer,
what are you really getting at here? And I show
the letters and stuff, and just if you're not familiar
with these figures, I know a lot of people there
were very obscure movements at the time, and you know,
people are not familiar with them, But I think are
familiar enough with this idea of like a super radical
(43:15):
cultural movement about step by step I show how it
can move into fully politicized a transgressive movement can move
into a fully politicized, super toxic neo Nazism that is
espousing terrorism, and that that this is something that we
always have to watch out for in our own religious
movements and our own cultural movements and accult circles. I
(43:36):
just did a podcast with some you know, a cult
style esoteric podcast, and I'm talking about Satanists to become Nazis.
Satanists are sort of i would say split these days,
but there's definitely a Nazi, you know, peace in there
are a very visible one. And so some of it's
just about these things.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
That's an important takeaway too that you know, in any subculture,
especially the sort of transgressive subcultures like you know, counterculture
music and art, and you know, occult spaces have a
magical practice that you engage in people who engage in,
you know, practice pagan faiths in all these subcultures, you
need to call out these bad actors early and often
(44:14):
push back, don't let them bully you, and push them
out of your.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
Spaces absolutely, and Nazis ruin everything. They intentionally go into
all these spaces and sometimes don't intentionally. Actually this was
a comment on Stormfront. I learned from talking about Nazis
and the animal rights movement, and they're like, Spencer doesn't understand.
We're not infiltrating these movements. We're just vegans. We're just
(44:37):
also Nazis. Like, but we're not vegans because we're Nazis.
We're not coming here from some other reason.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Well, you can't let them sit with you either way.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
Well, this is a funny story. I don't know if
you have tied, but I heard this story from a
friend of mine that they were in a vegan group
in southern California, I think, and they had a unofficial party,
like a barbecue. It's people from the group, from the
group doing it. People brought their partners. It wasn't an
official group function. But this one member of the group
brought her husband, who is Kevin McDonald. Oh, and they
(45:09):
were vegetarians or vegans, and people were like holy fuck.
And he was like, I mean, I feel a little
sympathetic to him. He's like, hey, man, I don't know,
I'm just I'm a I'm a vegetarian or whatever. I'm
here with my wife. She's going to a party.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Like, no, you're not allowed to have friends. You're not
allowed to have friends you're not allowed to have hobbies,
you can't be here.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
Yeah, but he's like, I'm not here to recruit anyone.
I'm here, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
It's the barbecue is over when the race scientist shows up.
Speaker 4 (45:36):
Well, this became a big discussion in the group about
whether to push him out or not. But you have
to do these things. And if you even if you
don't want to, they're my friend or everyone's welcome or whatever.
What is gonna end up happening if you don't push
the Nazi.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
Out is that more Nazis show up.
Speaker 4 (45:51):
Well, if it's a single person, people are gonna start leaving.
People of color are gonna leave, Jews are gonna leave,
LGBTQ plus people are gonna leave, and you're gonna end
up the one person losing many more So, even just
on your own, you know, enlightened self interest if you
want to keep your group together. And I've seen this
again and again and again, and then they're like, you're
defending a Nazi, so you're one too, So yeah, you
(46:13):
got to kick these people out, even just for practical reasons.
I have a very low bar for people these days,
and I try to appeal I try to appeal to
the baser reasons sometimes with people.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
You know well.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
If you would like to learn more about how a
couple of guys in the counterculture movement in the eighties
are responsible for the publication of the book that serves
as the bible for modern Nazi terrorism, you can pick
up a copy of Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism,
The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege by Spencer
Sunshine from Routlige Press is available, I think wherever books
(46:47):
are sold. I bought my copy directly from the publisher
Routledge Press. I think it was only twenty seven dollars.
You know, a bargain and a steal, So pick up
a copy of that and where else can people find
your work?
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Spencer, thank you for now that you mentioned that. I
am on all of the socials usually at Transform sixty
seven eight nine. Have a webpage if you want. If
you have an RSS feed. If someone said this recently,
they're like, it's actually one of the better ways to
keep track of people, as like this is your follow
rezillion people anyway, Spencersunshine dot com. Also, if you'd like
to support anti fascist research and get a warm, fuzzy feeling.
(47:22):
You should sign up for my Patreon for as little
as two dollars a month. You can help me out
with the rent and get some exclusive content. So yeah,
hell yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 4 (47:33):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. It's been great.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on me,
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
You can now find sources for It could Happen Here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Conger
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